Who's back up and running after Wirecard's collapse?

It’s safe to say Wirecard has had a rocky few weeks.  

Since EY discovered €1.9bn had gone ‘missing’ from Wirecard’s balance sheet, CEO Markus Braun resigned with immediate effect and was then promptly arrested by the German authorities, leaving the fate of Wirecard- and the firms that use it- hanging in the balance. 

Several days later, the German payment processing firm filed for insolvency, leaving many fintechs in the dark, and just a day later the FCA suspended Wirecard’s UK activities, meaning that customer funds were frozen.

Yesterday it was revealed that, after several days teetering on the edge, Wirecard’s UK arm could turn back on services used by fintechs. 

Last week we listed all the fintechs we could find that were still using Wirecard, so it's only right that we round up all the fintechs that were affected by the outage. 

ANNA Money 

ANNA Money 

As of yesterday, following the reinstatement by the FCA, ANNA said that most of its services were back up and running. 

Currently, users can use their cards as normal and make direct debits, however, customers can’t make bank transfers and the wrong balance may be displayed in the app. 

Curve 

Despite having distanced itself from Wirecard back in April following the delay in its special audit by KPMG,Curve went down over the weekend. 

Curve was still in the process of moving its core processes in house, a transfer which it has now completed, following the fall of Wirecard. 

In a blog post, Shachar Bialick, CEO of Curve, wrote: “Since Friday, there has been a herculean effort from Team Curve, along with our partners at Mastercard, and we’ve successfully completed our migration away from Wirecard, bringing our Card and E-money issuing in-house.” 

“This process was brought forward to minimise disruption and restore the service for our customers at the earliest possible opportunity and is a truly remarkable feat, completing a process that would ordinarily take months in just a few hours.” 

Curve customers still can’t send money between friends and family and users won’t be able to ‘go back in time’ on their purchases just yet either.  

Glint 

Gold trading platform Glint also fell victim to Wirecard’s collapse. 

While the fintech’s app remained unaffected, holders of the Glint card found their accounts frozen as the suspension of Wirecard’s UK activities unfolded. 

The Glint card, which enables users to use gold to spend and multiple currencies, is now back up and running. 

In an email to customers, Jason Cozens, founder and CEO of Glint, reassured customers that the fintech “has absolutely no money with [Wirecard].”  

Pockit 

Pockit, the challenger bank serving the financially vulnerable, was one of the fintech’s affected by Wirecard’s collapse over the weekend. 

The fintech, which has over 500,000 vulnerable users who can’t access traditional banking services, published a blog post with advice that included links on how to “find a food bank near you.” 

Despite the disruption, Pockit is largely back up and running with customers able to receive bank transfers, top-up their accounts, use their cards normally, including using contactless and withdrawing money from ATMs. 

Pockit’s users will have to wait a bit longer to send money to another bank account, pay direct debits and pay standing orders via Faster Payments. 

Soldo 

Business expense provider Soldo, which uses Wirecard to issue its prepaid cards, took its cards offline following the FCA suspending Wirecard’s UK activities.  

Despite the disruption, the fintech announced on 

Tymit 

London-based fintech Tymit, which uses Wirecard to issue its Visa-backed credit card, went down on Friday. 

As of yesterday afternoon, the fintech’s customers can use their Tymit card as usual, both online and in physical locations. 

In an email to customers, Tymit revealed that it was planning to set up “mitigating capabilities with alternative providers” to prevent such an outage from happening again.